The kids and I have been loving a new science series called “Let’s Read and Find Out Science”. The series covers all kinds of science topics; weather, space, animals, human body, dinosaurs, physics concepts, and more. They are so fun! So far, I am thoroughly impressed with how much information they provide in a simple way for kids to understand. Most every book comes with some sort of experiment, or further learning activity that you can do at home with things you already have. It’s genius! And I feel like I learn a lot too.
We’ve been on a space kick lately…more specifically a moon kick. We’ve used two of the Let’s Read and Find Out books for our study. The first book is called What the Moon is Like. It taught us about how the surface of the moon is covered in dust, and how meteors hit the moon to make big craters. Then we filled a Tupperware container with two inches of flour and sprinkled it with a thin layer of cocoa powder, to represent the moon’s surface. Next we took marbles and dropped them into the container from about five inches up. The marble hitting the flour is supposed to look similar to a meteor hitting the surface of the moon. I've never seen a meteor hit the moon, but our marbles definitely made craters in our flour. It was fun.
The second book we used was called The Moon Seems to Change. It taught us all about the phases of the moon. Inside it gives you the step by step directions (with pictures!) on how to make all the phases of the moon using an orange, a pencil, and a flashlight. We took turns being the sun (person holding the flashlight) and the earth (person holding the orange). After that, we had a little snack to go along with our lesson. We did phases of the moon a second time, using Oreo cookies. I had a rough go of it, trying to keep our moons from being gobbled up before I could snap a picture. :)
My kids enjoyed these activities. I can tell because while I was putting the boys to bed, my five-year-old told me he wanted to set his watch for 12:00am so he could get up and check on the moon, to see which phase it was in. I love it! We'll see if he follows through. I hope he does.